This is costing me all sorts of bad things. I'm missing opportunities to connect with good people, and since 90% of interesting things in life are the result of connecting with good people, I think this is really a big leak of good things from my life.

I've decided to get a CRM-like system. CRM stands for "customer relationship management" - it's commonly used in sales to track what communication you've had with a prospect/client/etc in the past. Have they gotten a brochure? Have you talked with them on the phone? Did you followup after they bought? How happy were they? Did they fill out a testimonial? Did they refer anyone? Did you send them a gift for referring someone? What's their birthday? Etc, etc.

As you can imagine, CRM systems can be super powerful if you build it right.

Now, a traditional CRM is built and based much more around the sales process and followup from that. Unfortunately, I don't have any such rigid process with my life. Some people I communicate with solely by email, swapping science articles and book recommendations. Some people I'm in very close touch with, covering tons of ground. Some people I'm friends with but only in touch 1-2 times per year, but they're business owners and I really should keep track to make sure I send them anything particularly relevant to their business I find.

And I don't do this, because I'm not organized with any sort of CRM-like system.

Stepping back a moment, "CRM" is the technical term used for sales. What I'm actually looking for is just a kind of "relational database" - what's that? It's a bunch of information you can sort by different fields.

It's actually a relatively simple concept on the surface, but built correctly for a given purpose, it can be very very useful.

So, I want one. I kept trying to build my own (with Filemaker Pro mostly) or research the tons of options that are out there, but I'm conceding defeat on this one and giving a nod to... well, all of my readers, but hopefully you.

If you're knowledgeable about CRM or relational databases or know someone who is, you can be a huge help to me.

Here's my basic minimal viable use case:

I'm going through my email. Someone I don't know writes me. I add their info to the system - name, location, occupation, whatever I know. Later that day, I talk on the phone with a friend of mine. I pull open the database in front of me and add some notes on a book recommendation he gave me. Later, I buy someone a copy of a book. I note down that I bought that book for the person. I get given a pair of boots as a gift. I mark down that the person gave me a pair of boots.

I'm planning a trip to Beijing. I search "Beijing" and everyone who lives in Beijing or is connected with the city comes up. I'm working on a job that would be really exciting and well-paying for a talented photographer. I search "photography" and all the photographers in the database come up. I finish reading "The Invisible Gorilla" and I do a search on that title to see who recommended it to me, so I can follow up with them and say thanks for the recommendation.

--

That's all I need for this thing to be super valuable for me. I can input data easily and search it easily. Sure, there's a million fancy features I'd like, but that plus a good interface is all I need to make this super useful.

I'd like to track fields like -

*Name
*Current relationship with them
*First contact
*Subsequent contacts
*Most recent contact/etc
*Their life goals
*Their travel history
*Their desired future travels
*Their skills/skillsets
*Hobbies
*Hobbies they wish to do in the future
*Things they wish to own
*Favorite books
*Gifts I've bought them
*Employment background/business background
*Deals we've done
*Jobs I've done for them
*Jobs they've done for me
*Birthday
*Things they've recommended to me/instructed me to do
*People they've introduced me to
*Do I want them on one of my counsels?
*Next thing I'd like to have happen with them
*Contact info: Phone numbers/mailing addresses/email/Skype/etc

And here's an example of the options to have in a field -

Possible relationships:
*They're not aware of me
*They're aware of me/no contact
*Blog reader/on my email list/etc
*We've made light contact (email/phone/etc)
*Acquaintances and we've haven't met in person
*Acquaintances and we have met in person
*Friends - we've hung out and can hang out
*On one of my counsels
*I'm on one of their counsels
*My client - I work for them
*Customer of a company I have a stake in
*Business associates - affiliates, other business partners
*Works for me - employee at one of my companies
*Works for me - personal staff
*Works for me - professional staff (accountant, lawyer, etc)
*[Custom roles]

Other requirements: Needs to work offline (Windows). Needs to either be easy to extend/modify later OR easy to export data from it to import into a future system.

That's all I need. There's probably a million other potentially useful features, but just the above would be super amazingly useful to me.

If there's something that's going to work for this well out of the box and you know of it, let me hear your recommendation and you're a saint in my book. If I need to build or customize something, I'm willing to throw some cash at this. If I need something built or customized and you've got the skills to do it, I can throw some cash at you or otherwise make myself of assistance - either professionally or personally. I'm versatile and useful and this system is going to make me much more effective, so definitely get in touch if you can help me with this.

Update, 22 hours after posting: Wow, thanks for all the feedback. I'm going to check out all the options and I'll reply to everyone within 48-72 hours or so at the latest. Thanks again. If you're just seeing this now, I'd still love to hear your take if you're knowledgeable, so shoot me an email or comment :)

Not sure if you have looked at FileMaker - their Bento product may have been an option if not Mac specific, but their FileMaker offerings (http://www.filemaker.com/ca/products/fmp/) are good, and have been around for a long time so have good knowledge and user base. A couple hundred bucks, but easy to use/implement and robust enough that you can grow with it.

I've been playing with this for work/personal note taking and it has been easy to learn and it might meet your requirements. Data is stored offline in regular html files, and I'm pretty sure you could build a basic system for contacts/related info with it that is searchable and easily organized. http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

I read your million dollar article and decided you're on to something. I am a fairly capable developer so if you like, I will build your CRM app to spec. You can be as involved as you like and I will implement whatever features or changes you request. I will charge nothing for my contribution. I will do this because I want to test the theory that this simple app will provide the productivity increase you anticipate. Email me!

I have lately been discussing a few ideas with my cofounder about http://neo4j.org/

Pretty sure that might be a very good solution to you other than a relational DB, after all, you can have a graphical view of the data and the relationship between one data and another (basically, who your contacts are connected to or have a relationship with). It is pretty useful for social networks, and I believe it might also fit your need with a bit of coding.

Read Next

About three years ago, I read the excellent book Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. At that time, I made a list of the top 5-10 people in my life that I was to and had similar goals with. I sent out emails to them every once a month with what I was working on.

Eventually, I fell off from this habit. Not sure why - I'd had gotten good advice, stayed in touch with people I like, and it was a positive experience. I started re-thinking building my counsel a little over a year ago.

The challenge is, I've got a diverse set of goals and ideas. I write, I do business, I travel, I create art, I adventure, I'm looking to establish a strong family, and so on. I have friends who are writers or artists that aren't interested in business. I've got friends in business that pretty much always stick to their one city. I know guys who are pretty simple, work a normal job, don't make any art or do any entrepreneurship, but have very strong and good families. I know very successful businessmen who travel and adventure, but aren't interested in having kids.

So I think I've been having a positive influence on Jeremy and my family as this weekend he cleaned out four (yes, you read that correctly FOUR) full boxes of DVDs. We went to Dixons Recycled on Brunswick St in Fitzroy and took them everything to have a look at and potentially buy. They bought a few things, gave us $125 and then we took the rest to the op shop. Some kid is going to be super happy to find the complete box set of the transformers cartoon series in Savers Mill Park!

We also visited my Mum's house. I've been helping her declutter her garage and we picked up the last of my boxes from my childhood bits and pieces and helped her move some furniture.

I spent this afternoon unpacking things I thought were important merely a couple of weeks ago and re-evaluated quite a lot of things and many books have joined the books to the second hand book store pile. I've got 2 stores I can take them to - one near my old work in Carlton and why near my house. I have my last shift ever at Carlton on Tuesday, so I'm going to go to the book shop after that to see what they'll buy, then take the rest to the one near my house. Hopefully I get some good money for all the bits and pieces.

I've spent a bit of time thinking about the sunk cost fallacy recently. I used to be so into collections. I had over 2,000 CDs, about the same in DVDs, and about 1,500 books. I had 3 7 x 4 bookcases double stacked with books.... Many I had never read, but I kept because I thought that I couldn't get rid of them if I hadn't read them yet OR if I'm totally honest, I thought they might make me look cool.